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It aggravates me when people say this to mothers who are considering relinquishment:
“After you place and get on with your life…”
Finish the sentence with anything you want: the sentiment still annoys me. What’s that? The idea that a birth mother just magically “gets on” with her life.
To a point, it’s true. You continue breathing. You wake up each morning. You go to sleep most evenings. In the end, life continues. But this “getting on,” or, as it is phrased sometimes, “moving on,” insinuates that the birth mother won’t be forever changed by the pregnancy, birth and placement of her child.
The changes are deep and permanent. Sometimes they aren’t immediately obvious but they exist. The feeling of motherhood creeps through your veins. The memories pop up when you’re least expecting it. Some birth mothers find themselves making very difficult but good life decisions in the hopes that their child will be proud one day. Others find themselves making very difficult but detrimental life decisions in the hopes that they can forget, if only for a minute. The “going on” with life is always tainted with the memory, the reality that she is a mother but… not quite.
Another annoyance with the phrase is that it is tossed about with out regard that emotionally moving forward will be vastly difficult for the majority of birth parents. In fact, it’s almost as if they’re saying, “If you fail to move forward fast enough, you’re a failure not only for getting knocked up in the first place but for not being a birth mother in the proper way.” Lose-lose.
I do have advice, though, for mothers who are trying to decide exactly how to go-forward/move-forward in those post-relinquishment months: Ignore everyone. That’s right. Everyone. Listen to your heart, your own pain, your own time table. Move forward at your own pace, even if that means moving a few steps back now and then. Allow yourself the room to grieve and, at the same time, don’t feel guilty for managing to find joy in regular day-to-day life. You will survive this time. You will eventually “go on,” “move forward” or whatever else they want to tell you to do. But you will be forever changed. And, sometimes, that’s not a bad thing.
Just do it at your own speed, in your own way.
